In this Game For Thought panel, we talk about the many interesting aspects that come into play as a parent of (young) gamers and how this plays a role in their upbringing.
A little who's who on the stream:
- Paul Darvasi: Executive Director of the Serious Play Conference, CEO & Co-Founder of Gold Bug Interactive (CA)
- Hannah Dam: Strategic Partnerships Manager at Healthy Gamer (U.S.)
- Kat Schrier: Founding Director of Games & Emerging Media Program at Marist College (U.S)
- Ian Schreiber (also joined by 13-year-old game artist, Janis Schreiber): Game Design Consultant at Mobile Game Doctor (U.S.)
Check out the full video here:
A TLDR of things discussed:
- Motivation/psychology behind gaming
- Common fears/anxieties of parents pertaining to gaming behaviors (and misconceptions)
- Effective parent-child communication strategies, and setting healthy boundaries & agreements
- Talking to your kids not only about playing games, but also about making them
- Leveraging games as a tool for positive socialization and skill development
Why do kids like to game?
Hannah Dam: When we ask people why they play games, they tell us it's because it scratches a kind of brain itch. Not just for children, but for all ages. At the surface it's usually because they are bored or looking for a fun activity, but when you delve deeper you notice there are multiple reasons. Some play games to master a specific skill, or earn achievements. Some look for social connections, and find this in the online world. And then there are people who play as a means of escapism, similar to reading a book or taking a walk when life gets too much, and the game lets you relax. Then there is autonomy, being the master of your own choices. And lastly, there is creativity, a way to express yourself.
What common fears do parents have about their kids gaming?
Ian Schreiber: My biggest concern aren't the games themselves. I grew up with games, I learned skills from them, I read a lot of magazines and manuals just to get better at games and I see this as a huge positive. My main concern is online play. It's useful to stay in touch with (distant) friends, but you can also meet a lot of people that are anonymous on the internet and that I don't want my kids being exposed to. So it's something I monitor closely.
Kat Schrier: I am a parent of three kids and I'm not afraid of games, but of how people treat gamers. It's almost like there is something wrong with kids or families who play games, in the eyes of some. I just want to clarify that there is nothing wrong with playing games in a family and that it can even facilitate closeness. During the pandemic, we used games to connect with each other. We played Exploding Kittens, Among Us and bonded over it.
I also just talked to another mom and she explained how gaming is a kind of language you can use to communicate with your kids. The way you connect with yourself or with the world, can be through games. My daughter and I played Animal Crossing New Horizons when it came out, we were showing each other how we decorated our in-game houses, and it was a way to express our own identities through this game. Playing the same game can become a kind of shared language that allows you to connect with your kids.
Do you have advice for parents who don't game themselves and who are worried about the time their kids spent playing games?
Hannah Dam: The parents that come to Healthy Gamer usually are the type who don't play themselves and often still think there is a negative stigma around gaming. We did a survey recently and one of the top concerns was that they were afraid that their kids were wasting their potential. They were worried that the time spent playing games was taken out of the time that could be invested in school, or that they were playing games instead of talking with their family at the dinner table. Often they try to set up boundaries around the time spent playing games and are met with resistance.
Where do you draw the line? When do we say there is a problem?
Hannah Dam: If you think there's a problem, there's probably a problem. That could be indicators like their grades dropping, or if the kids are not getting enough sleep or are more agitated than normal. It's usually when parents observe changes in their kid's behaviour. That's when we help parents rebuild those lines of communication, with tools like reflective listening, open-ended questioning, basically helping them rebuild the alliance between the parent and the child.
Does it require a new set of parenting skills to keep up with recent technological developments?
Paul Darvasi: We grew up on segmented blocks of playtime that ended on the hour or half hour, but now online games are uncertain. Who knows how long the next game is going to last or when a boss raid is going to be finished? It's hard to stop playing when you're in that space, it's so all-consuming. But I would argue that our clock-oriented society is kind of problematic. Games are pushing those boundaries.
Ian Schreiber: It's always tempting throughout generations to fear or blame new technologies. There is a fear of disconnect between parent and child because the hobbies are different and they can't talk to each other, but that happened just as well when we were growing up without games or tech. The challenge of "my kid is doing this thing and I don't understand it" has been around since the dawn of humanity.
Are there any practical tips & tricks on helping your kids manage their gaming time?
Ian Schreiber: Play with your kids. Take some time to play them together with your kids or watch them play and ask them questions about it. Be there in that space with them and engage in conversation around the game they are passionate about. Games are designed to be fun, so enjoy the time you can spend together around the game. You'll learn more about the games and it will give you insights and new vocabulary on how to talk to them about it, and to better express the limits of their gametime.
Paul Darvasi: Funny story: I talked to a mom some time ago who had a son that was losing himself in Battlefield. She decided to to join in and play the game with him and when he stopped playing the game she went on to become one of the top-ten ranked players in North America. It's like the extreme version of what Ian was saying.
Hannah Dam: She basically beat him at his own game. *laughs*
But I completely agree that the foundation is understanding what is so fun about these games and talking to your kids about it. Communication is key. Another step is for parents to regulate their own emotions, so we teach them to step away when they are not calm themselves and come back to a difficult topic later. Another tip is letting kids know preemptively when boundaries are coming, or even giving them some autonomy in the decision-making: "you're having trouble waking up in time for school, so what do you think would be a better time to stop playing and go to sleep?"
Kat Schrier: I acknowledge how hard it is for parents. You're trying to go to work, get your kids fed and dressed and finding time to play with your kids is just another thing on their plate. It can be fun, but it's also hard. You want them to feel autonomy and having a subculture where they feel comfortable in, without you overstepping their boundaries. And no two kids are alike, not even in the same household, so we need different strategies and different types of support. Even for me, I love games, but that doesn't mean I'll like what they are playing.
Have you ever watched your kid play a game and discovered something interesting about them?
Kat Schrier: My middle child has fine motor coordination issues. But when he's playing a game, he's very coordinated, doing complex precise jumps on a platformer because he persisted and kept trying. Practicing a skill even though it's challenging for him.
Paul Darvasi: I had a really funny experience with my son, playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It's a single-player game, but we played together, switching who had the controller, and my son was just appalled at watching me run into battles and dying. So it wasn't just learning about my son, that he's more patient and prepares better than his father, but it was also a moment of acknowledgement about myself and the decisions I was making. The game was an amazing way to show aspects of our personality that I don't think would have come out in different situations.
Ian Schreiber: You can learn more from a person through an hour of play, than from a year of simply hanging out with them. You learn so much about people from how they play. During the pandemic I even learned how good my kids are at lying and how they approach play in general. Even from elementary school games like foursquare, you can learn how nice or mean someone can be to others. You can see their personalities come out, but it's in the safety of this magic circle of play. People are more comfortable letting their true selves come out to the surface and you can learn a lot just by observing.
Kat Schrier: I wanted to chime in about how we play Among Us. Whenever we played and I was the imposter, my kids would get really upset because they didn't want to see me in the villain role. Even in the game they would expect me to play fair and take care of them, and then they felt so betrayed when I lied and killed them in the game.
How do you navigate conversations with your kids about making games?
Ian Schreiber: Making games and playing them are two very different things. A comparison I often make is that even though you might like eating cake, it doesn't mean you want to be a professional pastry chef. Those are two different activities. Both can be wonderful, but they are different. But I do like children thinking in not just content consumption, but also content creation.
Around the age of 1.5 kids start to understand simple concepts like a touch-screen and "I touch things, and thing happens". There is cause and effect and they get that. Around the age of 3 they learn that there are rules and goals, that you can win or lose, you try things and if you succeed, it will allow you to advance. But then around the age of 5 or 6 is when they start thinking about creation. Not just I like to play games, but their own ideas that they would like to apply into games that they want to make. Or come up with their own rules to alter the game.
Game development is a broad area, it requires art, programming, writing and more, and as a parent with game development skills, you can help fill those gaps for your kids. But we can let them share their experiences themselves, I'll let my 13-year-old do the talking, they've been making games in gamejams since they were 5.
Janis Schreiber: I'm usually the artist in Global Game Jams, which is neat because it may not seem like it, but I'm one of the driving forces to what the game ends up being. Concept art plays a large role in making games. Artists can really make a difference and play a role in how the story unfolds.
What has been your experience growing up while making & playing games with your gamedev dad?
Janis Schreiber: I always loved playing games. I grew up sitting in his lap and watching while he played games, or laughing when he died. One of my favourite games growing up was Okami, and recently I've been going back to it and playing it on my own. I also noticed how I didn't realize how the hours flew by when I started playing myself and I'd get really sucked into playing.
Janis Schreiber: I always loved the idea of becoming a game artists, but recently I've also gotten more into being a musician and thinking about how I could maybe incorporate that into games.
Any advice for parents of kids who play games?
Janis Schreiber: Please play games with your kids. It's not much different from playing outside with them, although maybe with a little less Vitamin D involved. But it's a good way to engage with your kids. I loved talking with my dad, we can even get lost for hours talking about game theories.
How can kids stay safe in the online environment that surrounds games?
Kat Schrier: There is a 2023 study of online games and they found that 3 out of 4 have experienced harassment in online games at some point. And 37% have experienced identity-based harassment, involving their gender, skincolour or other personal aspects. Which is terrifying. So it's important that you make it possible for your children to talk to you about this. For example when we played Among Us with other people online and my daughter would then immediately band people for cursing or using racial slurs, so we had discussion about why people would do that, what to do about it and which strategies you can use to protect yourself or others.
I just did a presentation for Blizzard on how Overwatch could be modified to reinforce positive engagements between players. As parents, we should be advocates for ensuring these (virtual) play spaces are safe for everyone. Not all online games are automatically bad, it depends on what you play, who you play with, how you play yourself.
Hannah Dam: Indeed. It's not even specific to games itself, It's like a life lesson that you're trying to pass on to your kids.
Paul Darvasi: Playing online is not just a bunch of strangers, they usually play with friends from their close social life. There is a series of social situations that they will have to learn how to navigate and play is just a model for the way that we work and find our place in the world. The way you negotiate, talk and learn to work through problems is very much how you'll have to work in the future.
The big gap is how schools deal with this. They shy away from these conversations, because they can't keep up. But this digital media is where their students spend a lot of their time. The world of games is their students' habitat. There is a basic responsibility for schools to include way more critical media literacy in the curriculum. It shouldn't be the sole responsibility of a parent, but also the institutions that we pay to educate our children.
Ian Schreiber: I just wanted to clarify between the different forms of online play. Some of them are open, but for example, in Minecraft you can limit it to people on your own server and only have trusted friends play on them. So one possible advice for parents is that you could potentially limit your children to only allow them to friend the people they know in real life, and you should talk to your kids about why that is important. So again it's important to play with your kids, so you learn what is possible in these games they are playing and how they navigate those spaces.
This is not so different from how we grew up listening to rap music with racial slurs in it or TV-shows with questionable themes and ideas and a big factor or whether or not we internalise that was if there was an adult in the room with you to have conversations with. It's not that we had to stop watching the show, but we had to be able to think about it critically and not just accept that that is how the world is.
Any last words to give to parents of gamers?
Hannah Dam: It often starts with yourself. So be aware of your own technology habits, and how this looks to your child. You can't complain about them spending hours on games and then do the same on your phone watching TikToks.
Kat Schrier: We should avoid stigmatizing our kids' behaviour. Sometimes it can be healthy to lock yourself out from the world and spend time with a game. It could be just what they need at that moment in their life.
Ian Schreiber: Don't be afraid to get your kids into making games. There are so many skills that go into making them, art, music, design, programming. And this also helps them think more critically about the games they are playing and how they are put together. You can even talk to them about how games are funded, because some of them may be free, but they can still have manipulative ways of making money.
Janis Schreiber: As has been said many times before during the panel talk: play with your kids. But like my dad just said, making games together with your kids, if that is a possibility, is also a great idea to bond with them over a shared hobby.
Paul Darvasi: Beware of lootboxes. My advice to parents of kids who play games: stay far away from lootboxes.
